History

50 years ago: The Minnesota Highway Department awarded a contract for the reconstruction of Highway 15 from 12th S. in New Ulm to the Cottonwood River bridge just beyond the Tropicana Club.

10 years ago: The Park and Recreation Commission took an offer of an anonymous donor to pay for putting a bronze sculpture, named “Herbie Hedgehog,” in German Park as the Park and Rec Department’s mascot.

One year ago: Bob Schabert of Courtland received the Nicollet County Outstanding Senior Citizen Award at the Nicollet County Fair.

And elsewhere…

Today is Sunday, Aug. 12, the 224th day of 2018. There are 141 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight:

On August 12, 1981, IBM introduced its first personal computer, the model 5150, at a press conference in New York.

On this date:

In 1898, fighting in the Spanish-American War came to an end.

In 1909, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indianapolis 500, first opened.

In 1944, during World War II, Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., eldest son of Joseph and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, was killed with his co-pilot when their explosives-laden Navy plane blew up over England.

In 1953, the Soviet Union conducted a secret test of its first hydrogen bomb.

In 1962, one day after launching Andrian Nikolayev into orbit, the Soviet Union also sent up cosmonaut Pavel Popovich; both men landed safely Aug. 15.

In 1985, the world’s worst single-aircraft disaster occurred as a crippled Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on a domestic flight crashed into a mountain, killing 520 people. (Four people survived.)

In 1992, after 14 months of negotiations, the United States, Mexico and Canada announced in Washington that they had concluded the North American Free Trade Agreement.

In 2000, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk and its 118-man crew were lost during naval exercises in the Barents Sea.

Ten years ago: Declaring “the aggressor has been punished,” the Kremlin ordered a halt to Russia’s devastating assault on Georgia — five days of air and ground attacks that left homes in smoldering ruins and uprooted 100,000 people.

Five years ago: James “Whitey” Bulger, the feared Boston mob boss who became one of the nation’s most-wanted fugitives, was convicted in a string of 11 killings and dozens of other gangland crimes, many of them committed while he was said to be an FBI informant.

One year ago: A car plowed into a crowd of people peacefully protesting a white nationalist rally in the Virginia college town of Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and hurting more than a dozen others. (The 21-year-old Ohio man accused in the attack, James Alex Fields, would face a state murder charge and federal hate-crimes charges.)

Thought for Today: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” — Rene Descartes, French philosopher (1596-1650).